Future Music published a short review of Apathetic in their reader's demos section this month. It's not that long so here's what it said in full :
This is another track that has a catchy intro but the verse then lets things down by plodding along a little. The instrumentation is great though, and the bass carries things well. Overall, this is only one or two hooks short of greatness.
Can't really decide whether or not to be pleased about that. What do you think? Nice to see Jun's artwork (see above) included though as it should be.
Right, I'm off to look for a hook...
I've worn shorts at night, had a few bugs fly in my mouth/eyes whilst cycling, been in a shop that's had it's air-con on and felt cold on a bus. Yep, summer is almost here. Well, summer for a Brit anyway, I know technically it won't be summer really til rainy season is over and done with but when it's 25 degrees of a daytime I am culturally unable to ignore the fact that outside it is NICE. Having said that, I have been moaning like a bastard for the last few weeks because it has rained so bloody much. Far too much like home for my liking. Bring on the sweaty arse crack, it may be humid but better than that waiting for summer to start feeling when you suddenly realise it's October :(
As promised, Windcheater's first E.P. is now available on BeatPick. You can visit the artist page and listen to the whole E.P. If you're then wanting to get your own copy it costs £2.50/€3.50 (that's about 500 Yen). It's got 4 tracks on it and they are;
1. Apathetic featuring Susan Doyon
2. Penalise 'em
3. Blank faced groove
4. The Pinch
Also check out other BeatPick artists as I have been doing the last couple of days. They are of a frighteningly high standard and cover a very widespan of genres. It also has a very 'sound' set up. You can read all about that here.
I'll let you all know how it goes, but for now it's nice to know I have a 'release' out there...somewhere :)
The nice people at Soundlift.com have decided to feature me on their front page for a week. Lovely stuff.
As you might have guessed from my post last night (this morning) I had quite a good time yesterday. It's a night I won't be forgetting in a long time and one that left me slightly drunkenly incoherent. I haven't danced that much in years either. A natural high I think it's called. I cycled home (very slowly) at about 5ish via Peace Park where I took some stunningly bad photos of the A-bomb dome looking like some kind of demented early bird tourist. I wonder what the good folk at the Udon-ya think of us too, turning up every couple of weeks and taking photos of each other. Back at home the obvious thing to do is to have another drink, watch a bit more Hifana, and then your favourite bits from Spirited Away, drunkenly cry at them and then go to bed. Ah! A life of tortured artistry. Oh well, all good clean fun.
Oh well, perhaps I can negate the effects that Star Wars has had on me by watching some more of the excellent Monkey Dust. I finally managed to get the 2nd and 3rd series from my local, er, retailer. Brilliant stuff. Not for those who like their comedy sugar coated. Infact its probably not even for a lot of people who might have previously thought they liked black humour. Very very dark, sick even. Nothing is sacred. One of my favourite television programmes ever I think. Where have you been Clive.....?
hugging the letters. Something like Ji Ji An. Done up like an old style house, we enjoyed lots of nice oden, soba and some tofu stuff amongst other things. Very pleasant indeed. As we were eating the snow started to fall. Nagarekawa isn't famed for its beauty but with nice places like Cafe Spice opposite it really did start to look lovely. Bit of a slow walk home though.
Life has been well hectic of late. Saturday was the GetHiroshima/Koba bonenkai which GHB and myself did a bit of DJing at. I say a bit, GHB had to man the fort for a lot of the night, and even when I was there I wasn't really. Infact I remember very little of the night at all, not because of the drink for once but something else that has been on my mind and consumed my life for the last month or so.....my workplace's Happyokai....
What else?...Bought an album online for the first time ever today. The times, they be a changing. Highly recommended Lotek Hifi - Mixed Blessings - UK hiphop? dub, dance hall stuff? I dunno, very good though.
errrrrr, I mumbled, not wanting to insult the cos-play girl asking me. Luckily before I had to come up with an answer she had thrust a flyer into my hand with a breezy 'here you are' for what I am sure was one of Akihabara's finest tea houses. Didn't go though......couldn't understand the kanji, fnar. I was surprised to read that a lot of the cos-play girls who work in these places do it as part of their hobby. They get paid, the customers love it. Isn't that beautiful?
Tokyo makes everywhere look small. Every time I go there it's size just bowls me over. I've been in Japan 3 years, can speak a bit of Japanese and can read Hiragana and Katakana and have some knowledge of how things like public transport work here. Then I go to Tokyo and stand outside a simple train station and think, 'What the FUCK do I do here?' No big city I have spent any time in, London and Madrid mainly, can come close to how overwhelming the whole experience can be. Infact the first time I didn't really like it....now I love it. Becomes a bit of a cliche the amount of times you say it but just the sense of safety and ease you can walk down a Tokyo street that I never feel even in my home country's capital is fantastic. It's a brilliant place to people watch rather than wallet watch.
My mate has just moved to within a World Champion Strongman's throw of Yoyogi park which is a great place. It's ironic that the little space Japanese people have in their apartments, so that they are forced outside to do things a lot us take for granted such as practising a musical instrument, creates such a fantastic environmnent. Hundreds of people, rehearsing plays, playing games, singing, dancing, even one high school girl practising her Happyokai speech, on her own, on a rock. Bless.
And then there are the Otaku :) One of my favourite spots in Tokyo is 
next to Yoyogi, at the Shibuya entrance. Along here you can see hundreds of bands/singers/comedy groups plying their trade to anyone who'll listen. Again its a great atmosphere (all that equipment would be gone in minutes back home) and some of the Idol hopeful's attract some really handsome chaps.....
So go. You'll get lost in a station, see some freaks/beautiful people and get really dizzy looking up at/down from some stupidly tall buildings. You can take some photos too....
About 5 years ago, when WC was first trying to get to grips with the internet and making music, I came across a site called Sample City. There were some good people there....and some idiots. Infact it was probably my first exposure to being annoyed by people I'd never met, BUT, this is about one of the good people, Stephen Braiden, aka Craig Johnston, aka The Tea Leaf Family. I think SC was the first place I ever put up a track for review. I can't remember what it was but I do remember a guy who had the same username as an old Liverpool legend liked it. I had a listen to his stuff and, after my only exposure to music on the internet being the boards on the old Mp3.com I was amazed. Today, through my post box I received TLF's first album - Until you get dizzy, released on Berlin breakbeat label (and one time Hiroshima visitors) Dangerous Drums. Played by the late great John Peel no less, it's hard to pigeon hole TLF. Not that I'd want to but we all do don't we? House, that isn't quite house, breaks, that aren't quite breakbeat, all helped along by the vocal talents of JJ the Detroit diva and Japan's very own Yuko Matsuyama. Yep there's Japanese on there. Can I understand it? Can I fuck. Lovely voice though. There are some classics that I remember from my old SC lurking days such as Flow and Eyeswide (infact I still have the vocal samples to that somewhere, maybe I'll have a stab at that remix again...) and a lot of stuff I haven't heard before, particularly in their entirety. Like Groove Armada TLF can and aren't afraid to mix it up, lovely rolling bass lines are a specialty that I'm quite jealous of. A really, very, very good album.
One small gripe.....where's my Japan only bonus track? ;)
How to get it : iTunes (a measly 99 cents, the European ones, a track, or 9.99Euros for the whole thing), search for TLF. Order it on TLF's news page via Paypal. If you live in Berlin, visit the news page again to see what shops it can be found in.
It also represents the first time the name Windcheater has appeared on a CD jacket.......in the thanks section :)
